Sorry for the recent radio silence here. The day job has been absurdly busy and time-consuming this week, and my evenings have been busy with work, social events and non-gaming-related activities, and the small amount of remaining time I’ve had to carve out for games-relating writing has been strictly focused on the upcoming Year In Games 2013 post.

Speaking of which, I’m nearly 2200 words into that post, but now, suddenly, I have to put it on pause for a little bit. I recently came into an Amazon gift card, and just this morning I happened to see that Amazon has the PC download (i.e., Steam-able) version of Batman Arkham Origins available for 40% off. I’d been waiting for a Steam sale to pick it up, but it hasn’t been discounted there at all this year – and meanwhile I think this is the second time Amazon had it on sale. In any event, the gift card meant that I didn’t have to pay for it anyway, so it’s now currently downloading on my home PC.

Of all the notable games of 2013 that I had not played, BAO was the one that I’d most hoped I’d get to. (Is that the second most-awkward sentence I’ve written this year? Not sure anything beats the first paragraph of this post.) The two previous Batman games are among my favorites of the entire console generation, and even though I know that this newest entry is (a) not developed by Rocksteady, (b) apparently pretty buggy, especially on the PC, and (c) probably not going to bust into my Top 10 (if the general review-scape is any indication), I’m still kinda jonesing to play it.

So, then, that’s the plan for this weekend during baby nap-times: to finish as much as I can of BAO, maybe try to squeeze in a bit more of Zelda 3DS, and also get the apartment ready for hosting Christmas next week. And so the GOTY post will have to wait just a bit longer.

Also: pretty much everything on iOS is on sale right now, and so if you have some room on your iOS device, you should get busy. Angry Birds Star Wars II is currently free. I picked up the Deus Ex game for iPad this morning for 99 cents, and I think I might get KOTOR when I get home ($5, down from $10).

Also also: The Room Two is fan-fucking-tastic.

Also also also: While the control scheme is a bit wonky, I still find it amazing that I have GTA: San Andreas on my fucking iPhone.

Also also also also: Halfbrick (who made Jetpack Joyride and Fruit Ninja, among others) have a new game out today, and it’s called Colassatron, and it’s pretty rad.